Monday, February 11, 2013

UPDATE: Tamara Ecclestone et al.

Now listen up, children. Your Mama well knows that some of y'all have a tendency to launch into a potty mouthed conniption or an indignant hissy fit like a six year old when we discuss the high-stakes real estate activities of English Formula One Racing heiresses Petra and Tamara Ecclestone. So, iffin you are one of those people whose blood is already gettin' up about this, let Your Mama suggest you just move it right along before you stroke yourself out. Do you hear? Your Mama does not want to hear your sad little whimpers and whines and neither does anybody else. Okay, gurl? Instead of acting a foul-mouthed fool in the comments section of a silly blog about high end and celebrity real estate, try putting on your big lady knickers and waiting patiently—and quietly—until Your Mama has something more to your persnickety real estate taste.* Anyhoo, with that out of the way....

Your Mama had a catch-up chit-chat with one of our better informed sources the other day—let's call her Shanahnduh Rotahnda this time—and she casually asked if we knew how much Tamara Ecclestone paid to lease her temporary digs in L.A.'s ritzy Bel Air area.

We told Shanahnduh that we know what everyone knows, which is that the elder Ecclestone sister did not buy or lease Suzanne Saperstein's faux-Chateau, Fleur de Lys, as was widely reported by property gossips around the globe but rather a much smaller spread that backs up to the Bel-Air Country Club where the folks at the British tab Hello! already staged and published a big ol', high-heeled photo shoot.

"That's right," said Shanahnduh knowingly. "But do you know how much she pays?"

Well, hold on to your real estate horses, chick-a-diddles, because according to the always eerily well-informed Shanahnduh, Miss Ecclestone leased her temporary West Coast outpost for six months (or so) at a heart-stopping rate of $150,000 per month.

A few quick clicks of the battered beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that amounts to $900,000 for the six month term. By middle class and even average rich people standards that's a whole hell of a lot of money to drop on six months rent but for a spendy rich gal like Miss Ecclestone that's no dough than she probably forks over every year to to keep her fingers and toes slathered in a shimmery, custom-tinted shellac.*

Listing information we squirreled out of the internets shows the sprawling residence—let's just call it a new-fangled Euro-Regency style villa—sits on just over a gated acre and has nine bedrooms and ten bathrooms in about 19,000 square feet. That's huge by just about any real estate standard but it's definitely not on the proportional level with a house such as Fleur de Lys or her Petra's 56,000 square foot pile a few miles away.

Some of the interior spaces that were seen in the Hello! photo shoot include a center hall foyer with a glammy, Old School black and white checkerboard marble floor and grandly scaled public rooms that include a formal living room with adjoining conservatory and a double-height library/office. Less formal family quarters include an open-concept kitchen/breakfast/family room, a spacious fitness room and a temperature-controlled walk-in wine cellar.

The grounds include a spoke-patterned red brick driveway and motor court, a second side motor court for access to the three car garage, formal gardens, flat lawns and a vast bi-level slate terrace that surrounds a dark-bottoms swimming pool and overlooks the golf course at the fabled Bel-Air Country Club.

Ownership of the property is shielded behind a Houston, TX based corporate entity but several sources tell Your Mama that everybody in L.A.'s more uppity real estate circles knows that residence is owned by 30-something year old bank analyst turned junk jewelry fat cat Charlie Chanaratsopon who, it seems, sells enough cheap earrings and animal themed enamel bracelets via his 180-plus Charming Charlie shops in middle-brow malls around the country to afford to buy and maintain a high-maintenance estate in prime East Gate Bel Air that was purchased, as per property records, in late 2011 for $14,900,000.

A deeper drill down into the property records shows the property—if not the house itself which was recently (re-)built—has an interesting provenance. In the early 2000s it was owned by John J. Legere, the newly installed CEO of T-Mobile USA, who acquired the residence in late 2000 from theater legend Jerry Herman whose up for grabs West Hollywood condo-crib was discussed by Your Mama just last Friday and who bought the house from Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated film and television producer David L. Wolper (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory....the original one, Roots, The Thorn Birds, L.A. Confidential and etc.)

Now that the expansion and renovation of her 55-room mega-mansion on London's exceedingly well-secured Kensington Palace Gardens is complete—or nears completion, we're not sure—Miss Ecclestone recently hoisted her contemporary art-filled starter home in central London's Chelsea nabe on the market with a £19,750,000 asking price, an amount that Your Mama's currency conversion contraption shows converts to $31,193,700 at today's rates.

On a side note, iffin any of y'all think the young and unimaginably privileged Miss Ecclestone is paying an arm and a leg to lease her L.A. mansion you better swallow a nerve pill before we tell you that Shanahnduh Rotahnda also snitched to Your Mama that word on the Platinum Triangle real estate gossip grapevine is that Ritz-Carlton developer Mohamed Hadid recently leased his immoderately lavish 48,000 spec-built mega-monster manse directly across the street from the perennially posh Beverly Hills Hotel—you know the one, the one listed for sale with a stomach churning $58 million price tag—to a sick rich Russian for $300,000 per month.

*Oh, lowherd have mercy on Your Mama, we probably done really poked the hornet's nest now.
**Your Mama, of course, hasn't even the flimsiest notion how much money Miss Ecclestone spends every year having her fingernails clipped and painted. For all we know she and her baby sis Petra get together every Wednesday at eleven to paint each others' toenails and braid each others' hair.listing photos (from Nov. 2011): Westside Estate Agency

She seems to have a thing for French-style architecture: if not the Beaux-Artish Fleur de Lys, then surely she liked this country-style residence.

Which means she won't buy the Kent Kresa 1146 Tower Road (the George O. Kolb estate) I randomly thought she might. LOL. It's close to Fleur de Lys and she would be neighbours with the Beckhams and Avdolyan.

Congratulations, Your Mama, for the 'cold open' of this posting: the 'jokes' were getting ridiculous and annoying. Too bad the 45-degree Google image shows it as not yet finished.

Oh mama. Let us be potty mouthed when it is called for. I will try to abide by your dictates but I did so much want to relate what the concierge of a fancy Paris hotel said when people complained about prostitutes loitering in the bar. But I will not.

A bit tangential but perhaps still of interest. Your remark about the guy who sells cheap jewelry and has made a fortune doing it reminds me that the jewelry business is one of the best. You know this because Warren Buffett owns a jewelry chain. I am sure it is profitable for the simple reason that your average Joe has no idea whatsoever about the real value of bangles and dangles when he sees them and just jumps at all things shiny and that glitter. People who know make lots of money selling to people who don't know at all.

@ Whatever Hppened to Big Mansions... Mohamed is developing a new gated community off Coldwater Canyon, south of Beverly Ridge. He is leveling off mountains and developing a whole community of mega-mansions eventually.

I just opened the Westside Estate Agency's website and found out that the house that stood on the former Frank Sinatra estate has been razed! When?! LOL. And then see that the same fate befell the former house of Barbra Streisand across the street. But that must have happened years ago.

Simmer down sistuh. You realize that not everyone in the U.S. reads The Daily Mail, right?

You would be surprised. I think it was in the news that it was the most visited website on this planet. Your Mama is an avid and voracious reader. I love it when she does this kind of thing before the others, but sometimes it isn't possible.

The black and white marble floor is lovely; however, the Rabbi can only speculate concerning the design of the principle stairway. And the hall lantern hung in the library suggests a drafty reading room.

Fifty-three seconds into the ongepotchket Hello! video, the Rabbi glimpsed just a peek of the curved interior stairs, eclipsed by Tamara's admittedly zaftik form. After that hot orange nafke, the video appeared to regress from Technicolor to black and white. Kinderlach, the Rabbi has had enough of that oysvorf Tamara and her oytser (not oyster!) of a sister, and needs a double Jameson, hold the rocks, quick!

The Ecclestones sure make it hard to negate the argument that the rich should be taxed more. They spend like drunken sailors in the most vulgar manner ever. They have had money for a long time now, you would expect better behavior out of them than the common class spending behavior of someone who just won the lottery or signed a pro-athlete contract.

10:28, yes, they completely behave like Chavs with money, it is really sad.

Not sure if this will translate well into Marxist dogma, but "spending like drunken sailors" is way better for redistributive class equalization than high taxation. In case you haven't noticed, the most affluent zip codes surround Washington DC.

zaftik: juicy, although commonly used to objectively describe a full-figured woman.

nafke: a very un-rabbinical word that the Rabbi regrets using! The Rabbi's own Mama used this word just once, in reference to her Aunt Bluma, when complaining in exasperation that she couldn't distinguish Bluma's numerous boyfriends from Bluma's multiple husbands. The Rabbi is hesitant to define this word in English.

oytser: (not oyster!). two meanings. 1). treasure. 2). assuredly NOT a treasure. Which meaning do you suppose the Rabbi intended?

Alas, the Rabbi did not place winning bids on Barbie's important furniture; however, she is pleased to have walked away with Barbie's three very fine Czechian chandeliers, reported to have once illuminated a Hapsburg palace.

The Rabbi also enjoys your comments, along with those from many among Mama's Kinderlach!

Thank you, dearest Rebbe, for bringing our linguistically disadvantaged siblings up to speed; even here in NYC, precious few will find any Yiddish more than schmuck & putz (now why did those come to mind?) whilst ordering a bagel with lox & a shmear...reminds me that Pater always over-used the term zaftik, much to Mater's discombobulation.

As for the sisters, don't really care enough if they live or die, although I must admit there is a tiny part of me that looks forward to their eventual penury/downfall a la Kleenex boxes for slippers.

Oh, no, Li'l Boy! You did not just say that... :( I don't really think they're that bad, I mean they aren't evil witches with awful personalities and temper who mercilessly torture their employees. Apart from shallowness, they don't seem like awful, evil people. Why would you want them to become bankrupt...

"Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and the execution is carried out automatically and without pity."

So did Anna Anisimova rent the mansion across the street from the Bev Hills Hotel??? I hear she is moving to LA and is selling the Time Warner property. Mama do you know if she has bought an LA property? Dying for an update on her!!!